


soundproofing (or, whirl goes to therapy again)

by ApatheticRobots



Series: the good doctor, in the context of involving so-called 'doctors of divinity' [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Even more projection, Gen, Introspection, Rung is a Good Doctor, Therapy, Whirl has ADHD, discussion of trauma, emotional honesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25689361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots
Summary: What it says on the tin. After a fight, instead of ending up in the brig, Whirl ends up in Rung's office.
Relationships: Rung & Whirl (Transformers)
Series: the good doctor, in the context of involving so-called 'doctors of divinity' [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862869
Kudos: 40





	soundproofing (or, whirl goes to therapy again)

**Author's Note:**

> well here we are again   
> time for more projection--
> 
> unbeta'd, because it's too early and none of my friends are awake yet. i have more feelings about whirl and i am going to say every single one of them. i have a keyboard and that's everyone else's problem.
> 
> i dont know if this needs to be rated t i dont understand how the rating system works whatever

One of the cool things about Rung’s office was that thanks to the soundproofing in the walls meant to protect doctor-patient confidentiality and all that, it was virtually impossible to hear sound coming from any other part of the ship. There could be a screaming match going on in the hallway outside and the folks  _ in _ the office wouldn’t have a single clue about it. They could continue to have their soft spoken therapy appointment in peace.

Of course, when someone was trying to  _ avoid _ conversation, the lack of distraction was more inconvenient than anything.

Rung was, above all else, patient. He would wait as long as he needed to for the person on the sofa to start speaking. Which was a good thing, one of the things that made him a good doctor, it let his patients gather the strength to discuss things on their own time. Patience was one of the best traits for a doctor to have.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t still pissing Whirl off, though.

Because if Rung wasn’t talking, and Whirl wasn’t talking, that meant save for the ticking of the clock Rung always kept, the office was completely silent. Almost to the point of it being oppressive. The absence of speech like a physical weight hanging over their heads. Rung was going to wait for Whirl to say something. And he could wait a long time, because this was an emergency appointment, which meant they weren’t really on a time limit.

Which was also annoying. Normally, if there was something Whirl was trying to avoid discussing, he could shut his trap and eventually the time limit would let him off the hook (until next week, at least). A convenient ‘get out of therapy free’ card. But his other option was the brig, and though he was well acquainted with the cells in the lower part of the ship, he wasn’t  _ fond _ of them.

Sometimes he wished Rung would just give up on him. Stop trying so damn hard. Just let him wallow in peace instead of putting his own frame on the line by vouching for Whirl when it was in his best interest to just stay out of it. It made Whirl feel bad and he didn’t like it.

The tagline for Rung’s job was basically just ‘professional meddler’ though, so maybe he shouldn’t have been too torn up.

He realized, somewhat belatedly, that his ability to be honest about his guilt (and distaste for it) was probably  _ because _ of Rung. Before this trip and his appointments started he probably wouldn’t have even considered the notion that his actions might have consequences that affected others. And that he should feel bad about those consequences. 

In his defense, he hadn’t gone into Swerve’s planning on starting a fight. But there were only so many insults about their appearance a guy could take before they got a little mad. Throwing the chair at Ultra Magnus  _ had _ been an accident, though.

He supposed he should consider himself lucky that Rung was in the bar at the time. That enabled him to step in when Mags was clearly about to cut him a new one and say (in that soft-spoken voice of his that he always used and Whirl couldn’t bring himself to talk over)  _ “It’s fine, he’s my patient, let me handle him.” _ And Ultra Magnus, for all his horniness regarding following the rules, had just as much trouble as the rest of them saying no when Rung used the ‘doctor voice.’ So instead of jail time he just gave Whirl a warning look and sent him to follow after Rung like a lost pet.

Which brought them to where they were now. Rung sitting behind his desk with his hands placed one over the other in a non-threatening manner and Whirl sitting on the couch, picking holes in it with the tip of one claw.

Damnit. Whirl was going to have to talk first, wasn’t he?

“I’m not sorry,” he started with, because he knew Rung was going to ask if he regretted starting the fight and he didn’t.

Rung leaned forward slightly, bracing his hands against the surface of the desk. It was his way of making sure his patient felt like he was listening to them. The glasses made it kind of hard to tell where he was looking sometimes.

“I deal with a lot of scrap. From people on this ship and off it. And I take it in stride, because what the hell else am I gonna do, fall apart? Not on anyone else’s terms on my own.” He pulled up a piece of fuzz from the sofa. Then shook his claw a couple times to get rid of it. It drifted down and got caught in his rotor. Damn. “But there’s some stuff I’m just not gonna deal with, y’know? Like stuff-- stuff about  _ stuff _ I can’t help.”

“Like your appearance,” Rung said.

“Like my appearance,” Whirl agreed. “I didn’t  _ ask _ for this. And yeah, I haven’t exactly sought to get it fixed either-- and I could, I know that, enough folks have told me.” Far too many people have told him. “But I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to change myself for them not to pick on me.  _ I’m _ fine with how I look. Why can’t  _ they _ be?”

Rung made a humming noise, the sound he made when he was trying to put his thoughts into words. “Have you considered that they’re just trying to get a reaction out of you?”

Whirl spat static. “Why do you think anyone does anything, doc? Of course they were trying to get a reaction. And they got one. Was  _ Megatron _ just trying to get a reaction out of the Senate when he led a revolution against them? Don’t answer that, he was, and when they didn’t give him the one he wanted, he killed them all.” 

“So you’re saying it’s better if you give a reaction, that otherwise they’ll do something worse to you.”

“I’m saying if I give the reaction they expect when they try to get it from me, I don’t get them trying anything new when their usual methods don’t work.” He could deal with what he could expect. It was when people acted unpredictably that he got uncomfortable.

Rung tilted his head. “It’s another situation of control.”

“Isn’t everything involving socializing? I get mad when they try to piss me off. Expecting me to stay chill about it is like expecting Ultra Mags to not correct a grammar mistake on an official report. Didn’t he once arrest someone because of an apostrophe? Let’s talk about his issues. I’m sure he’s got a lot of them.”

“Whirl, you’re deflecting.”

“Is it working?”

The dry smile Rung gave him said very clearly that no, it wasn’t. “What Ultra Magnus and I discuss during his appointments is between him and I. We’re talking about you right now.”

“Damn.”

“Let me ask you something, Whirl.” He pulled his chair up a bit. “I understand that you get angry easily, and that you tend to react in such a way whenever anyone picks on you for anything. But you’re not in the brig often enough for me to believe that you react this badly to every single insult. So what about this time made you so angry?”

Whirl fidgeted, trying to pick the piece of fuzz out of his rotor with the tip of a claw. It wasn’t working. “I dunno. Just… Don’t like people using my appearance against me.”

“Because you couldn’t control it.”

He looked away. 

“I’ll take your silence as a ‘go on,’” Rung stood, walking over to the drawers along one wall and kneeling down to sort through them. “I’ve noticed you have something of a…  _ unique _ connection with being in control of your situation. To the point where it affects you very badly if you aren’t. When it comes to many aspects about your identity, they exist because you’ve crafted them in a specific way. Except,” he stood, a large crate in his arms. It was set on the table. “For your appearance.”

The claw digging into his rotor paused. And retracted. 

“Your response to taunts in this situation were more aggressive than usual because the subject matter was something you had no control over. Am I right so far?”

“Wish you weren’t.” It was a ‘yes.’

“Even if you’ve become comfortable with it, you can’t take responsibility for the way you look. So instead you get angry and lash out.” He started rifling through the box’s contents. “When the target of their mockery is your chaotic persona or violent tendencies, you can take the insults in stride, because you know that the only one responsible for the aspects that draw their ire is yourself. But when it’s about the things you can’t control, there’s nothing you can do but internalize it. Or, as you showed today, shut them up with force.”

“I didn’t kill them.”

“You didn’t. I’m impressed by your restraint.” Only Rung could say something like that and not have it sound completely patronizing. He knew of Whirl’s violent tendencies, and he knew that Whirl refraining from going overboard and doing irreparable damage  _ was _ something to be impressed by.

“...Thanks.” He moved from picking at the sofa to picking at a chipped bit of paint on one leg. “...Hey doc?”

“Yes?”

He held out the arm that was steadily dripping energon from a jagged gash across it. “Can you give me a hand?”

“Of course.” Rung finally found what he was looking for in the crate, a small white box, and set that down while he knelt to put the rest of the crate away. From the smaller box he pulled a small hand welder and a cube of medical grade. And a straw. The latter were set where Whirl could reach while the former Rung raised to the injury and carefully began soldering it closed. 

“Ratchet could probably do a better job,” Rung said, an apology in his voice. “I’m a doctor, but not this kind of doctor.”

“Ratchet doesn’t like me.” The welding wasn’t painless, but Whirl held still anyways. He’d felt worse. He could sand down and paint over the scar on his own time. “He’d probably do as much as you are. Patch job just to get me outta his medbay.”

Rung frowned. “He’s not going to let his personal feelings get in the way of his profession.”

“Tell  _ him _ that.”

“Is Ratchet denying you treatment, Whirl?”

Whirl squinted at Rung, then looked away, focusing on drinking his energon instead. “No. It’s me. He treats me as much as he treats anyone else, I just don’t like being there. Feels like everyone just wants me out of there as soon as possible. And I don’t often stay where I’m not wanted, so I take the bare minimum and then I go.” Plus most of his injuries were from getting into fights with people, and when he was mad at someone, the best thing he could do was stay away from them for the foreseeable future. If they were also in the medbay, he should be somewhere else.

The welder went quiet, and Rung ran a careful hand over the jagged scar it left behind. “Better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Not a problem.” He set the welder down on the desk, then turned back and held out his hand. “Rotor?”

Whirl rolled his optic, but held the arm out anyways. Rung carefully nudged the blades of the rotor aside so he could grab the piece of fuzz that had gotten stuck and get rid of it. “It’s okay to ask for help, Whirl.”

“I know. I did ask you, didn’t I?”

  
“You did. I’m proud of you.”

He clicked his claw a couple times. An awkward fidget. “It’s not that big a deal.”

  
“If you don’t want it to be a big deal, I won’t make it so.” He set a hand on Whirl’s shoulder. “But I’m still proud of you. You’ve come a long way since the trip started, and it’s impressive seeing how much you’ve grown as a person.” 

“I’m not a paragon.”

Rung moved his head like he was rolling his eyes. Whirl couldn’t see behind the glasses. “There’s a lot of space between a paragon and a terrible person. You’re neither.”

“Closer to the terrible person half, though?”

“I’d say smack dab in the middle.” He picked up the welder and tucked it away in the box, kneeling to put it back in the crate. “Are you feeling any better? About what happened earlier?”

Surprisingly, he did. Rung’s office had a calming vibe about it, as did Rung himself-- it was hard to stay angry after spending time around the unassuming therapist. He was able to take Whirl’s mind of the thing that had made him mad in the first place, and though Whirl was never good at holding on to emotions very long, he didn’t even have that lingering sense of upset that came with fading anger. He was just… fine.

“Yeah. Still not gonna apologize, though.”

Rung smiled, taking his seat behind his desk. “I didn’t expect you to. Try not to start any fights for a little while? I doubt Ultra Magnus will be lenient enough to allow me to take charge of you if it happens again too soon.”

“Hm… How’s a month sound?”

“Whirl.”

“Kidding!” He stuck the empty cube in his subspace, reminding himself to throw it out later. He’d forget. There was a lot of trash sitting around in there. “Two months.”

“ _ Whirl.” _

“Also kidding! Probably. Anyways, seeya!” He gave a salute with one claw before darting out the door. Rung could act as mad as he wanted, but even with the office’s soundproofing, he could hear the doctor laughing from within the office before the door slid shut. 

**Author's Note:**

> yes im a whirl kinnie no i am yes i am not <3


End file.
